Astronomy

I got a pair of zhumell tachyon 25x100 astronomical binoculars for Christmas. I'm pretty impressed by them. I was out looking at the moon tonight and also Saturn. Could easily see the rings of Saturn with these binocs. They're awesome.

Any other astronomy buffs out there in blitzland?

Btw, if you're into it, you should definitely download Stellarium. It's free and totally kicks butt. Easy way to find all sorts of celestial objects.

yeah. Look for the face on mars. hehe

Chroma

I've a six inch refractor in storage - one of those cheap Celestron models. I'm intending to get back into it, but Blitz dev is taking all my time at pres.

Gots a 3700 dollar Meade 10" LX200GPS. :)

They call it a Hubble for your back yard.

http://www.meade.com/lx200r/index.html

Nice!

I'd love to get into astronomy later in life, perhaps when I'm no longer living in the centre of a smog cloud. Nice telescope Kanati...

Wow! :)

If somebody would be walking on the moon and on the "downside" of the moon as viewed from here, then I guess when you watch that person with a telescope/binoculars, he would be upside down! :) (Just a funny thought.)

I once did have it for hobby (pre-computer era for me), I even have a telescope of about one meter with 10cm opening. Metal standard, all quite decent. The problem is that if you really want to see stuff you should do either one of the next two things: build a serious observation building on a mountain in your neighbourhood with a 2m-diameter telescope or better, *or*, buy a book with ready-made pictures. (and today you can also browse the web).

Practical astronomy gets interesting if you're living outside of the industrialized world or somewhere in space, with a huge telescope you can use. Other than that: astronomy will be limited to reading about it and occasional stargazing on clear nights.

Well impressed by that. Take it you live out in the sticks?

Kanati...I'm looking at the LX200R 8 inch myself. It's pretty much right up my alley. I'll have to hold off about 6 months or so but i'm definitely gonna get one.

Right now I have a Meade 4.5in reflector telescope. I hadn't used it in 5 years so I had to take the mirror out and soak it in detergent and dry it with alcohol. Saturn looked great but my 3x barlow lens is total garbage and so is my 4mm eye piece. So I was pretty limited in my magnification. 900mm focal length / 12.5mm eye piece = 72x power. /cry The 4mm was too fuzzy (dirty with scratches...not to mention CHEAP!) If I had a decent 4mm tho I could get 900/4= 255x power! That would have been nice. /cry again

Madjack...a 6inch refractor is very decent.

okay lemme rephrase that. I could easily make out the rings of saturn. I couldn't see segments.

Kinda looked like this:

-o-

Bout that size in the lens too. The binocs have a really good fov.

The problem with binocs of course, is keeping them steady.

One device I've seen marketed is a tabletop stand that has the binocs fixed and pointing down, looking into a good quality mirror. You change the angle of the mirror to pan the view vetically or rotate the entire device to pan horizontally. The advantage is that you don't have to hold up the binocs and you don't get a crick in the neck.

Chroma

'Madjack...a 6inch refractor is very decent. '

Yes and no - it's an achromatic, so it has quite a long focal length to try to reduce false colour. So the length which makes it cumbersome to use. I need to replace the eyepieces and diagonal it came with - and the finderscope - but I've managed to replace the aluminium tripod with an old surveyors tripod, so it's relatively steady.

Having said all that, there's no denying the light gathering power of the 6inch hunk of glass at the front of the tube.

Got me a pair of eye balls.